Chapter 107
The mountain air was thin and cold, carrying the scent of snow from peaks that scraped the sky. He had spent hours in that narrow fissure, watching Ashely's breathing steady, feeling her mana stabilize. He had healed her wounds, purged the corruption.
His mana sense stretched outward, thin from the effort of the past hours but still functional. One kilometer, then Two. The mountain slopes fell away into the valley below, rock giving way to scrub, then to the first thin trees of the forest that carpeted the lowlands.
He felt her moving.
A flicker of mana, familiar and distinct—the bloodline seal he had placed on her chest, the one meant to hide her from the demonic beast's senses. It was moving, toward the broken seal to the Demonic Mana beast.
Idiot.
The word formed in his mind with cold clarity. He had told her to wait. He had told her to stay hidden. He had risked everything—his mana, his body, his life—to pull her from that chamber, and she was walking back into it. The queen who had spent years preparing for this moment, who had accepted that she would die sealing the beast, who had made him promise to protect her daughter—she was throwing herself at the one thing that could destroy everything they had fought for.
He understood why. That did not make it any less foolish.
Lucas exhaled slowly, forcing the frustration down. He could not go after her.
He stepped out onto the open slope.
The stone here had been scoured clean by wind and time, a wide shelf of gray rock that jutted from the mountain's flank like a broken tooth. Below, the valley stretched toward the forest. Above, peaks lost in cloud. And in the center of the shelf, two figures stood waiting.
Scarlett's red hair moved in the wind like a banner, her eyes fixed on him with an intensity that had not been there before. Beside her, the blue-haired demon—Veylan, though Lucas did not yet know his name—stood with his bow unstrung, his face unreadable. They had been here for hours. Waiting. Knowing he would come.
Neither spoke.
Lucas walked forward, his footsteps slow and deliberate. His mana core was full—the recovery clone had seen to that—but his body was still heavy from the fight below. His ribs ached where the beast's claw had caught him. His arms burned where the golden light had nearly torn itself apart. He had not entered Astral Mode. He would not enter Astral Mode that form consumed too much, demanded too much.
He stopped twenty meters from them.
Scarlett tilted her head, studying him. The spear in her hand pulsed with dark light, its edge blurring the air around it. Veylan's bow was already drawn, an arrow of compressed wind nocked and waiting.
"You're finally back," Scarlett said.
Lucas said nothing.
"You could have stopped her. Gone after her instead of coming here." Scarlett's lips curved. "But you knew we would follow. That if you turned back, we would be behind you, and she would have no one to hold us off."
Still, Lucas did not speak.
"So you came to face us instead. Without your transformation." She laughed softly. "That's either very brave or very stupid."
Lucas's frown deepened. Not at her words—at the sensation still flickering at the edge of his mana sense, Ashely was still moving.
He pulled his focus back to the two before him.
"I don't need the transformation," he said.
Scarlett's smile widened. "No?"
"No."
She lunged.
[Void Spell: Singularity Spear]
The spear shot forward, trailing black light that bent the air around it, erasing the space between them. Lucas moved.
[Mana Spell: Flash Step]
He blurred sideways, the spear's point passing where his chest had been. The shockwave caught him anyway, tearing at his coat, opening the shallow wound on his ribs. He ignored it.
[Mana Spell: Searing Lance]
A spear of white-hot mana formed in his grip and shot toward Scarlett. She raised her hand, a circle of Void magic blooming before her, swallowing the lance whole. The energy vanished into the nothing between spaces.
Veylan released his arrow.
[Wind Spell: Tempest Piercer]
The arrow moved not as a straight line but as a current, shifting direction mid-flight, finding the gap in Lucas's movement. He caught it with a palm reinforced by mana.
[Mana Spell: Revolting Mana]
The arrow shattered against his skin, the wind dispersing into harmless eddies. His palm stung, but the spell held.
Scarlett was already moving, her spear reforming, her body a blur of red and black as she closed the distance at 150 meters per second. Lucas met her.
[Mana Spell: Body Reinforcement]
[Mana Spell: Body Enhancement]
[Mana Spell: Musculature Weave]
His speed climbed—100 meters per second, then 110, then 120. He drew his katana, the blade singing as it left the sheath.
CLANG!
His blade met her spear, the impact sending shockwaves across the stone shelf. She was faster, and Stronger. Her spear drove against his guard, forcing him back step by step. Veylan circled behind, matching Lucas's speed at 120 meters per second, arrows forming in his hand, each one waiting for the opening she would create.
Lucas pushed her back with a surge of mana, spinning to deflect an arrow that had already loosed.
[Mana Spell: Slasher]
The crescent of blue energy shot toward Veylan. The blue-haired demon dissolved into wind, reappearing ten meters away, an arrow already drawn. Scarlett was on him again before he could recover.
Her spear thrust toward his chest. He parried, the impact jarring his arm. She thrust again. He sidestepped, his katana cutting a line across her side. The Void armor she wore absorbed the blow, the blade skidding across its surface without finding purchase.
She kicked him in the chest.
Lucas flew backward, hitting the stone hard, rolling to his feet as another arrow buried itself where he had landed. His ribs screamed. His vision flickered.
[Mana Spell: Shadow Mirage]
Three copies split from his body, each one darting in a different direction. Scarlett's spear swept through one. Veylan's wind blade cut another in half. The third—the real Lucas—circled behind them.
[Mana Spell: Phantom]
He vanished. Not a blur, not a shadow—complete absence. His presence, his mana signature, his very existence in their perception erased. Scarlett's head snapped around, her senses reaching, finding nothing. Veylan drew his bow, his eyes scanning.
Lucas reappeared behind Veylan, his katana already swinging.
The blue-haired demon moved, but not fast enough. The blade cut across his back, shallow but bleeding. He spun, a blade of wind forming in his hand, and struck.
[Mana Spell: Kinetic Shell]
The shield snapped into place, capturing the wind blade's force, converting linear impact into rotational energy. Lucas spun with the blow, using the momentum to launch himself at Scarlett.
[Mana Spell: Harmonic Disruption]
The spell shot from his free hand, invisible threads of mana seeking her spellwork. Her spear flickered, the Void energy destabilizing for a fraction of a second. Long enough.
His katana found her guard. He pressed forward, strikes coming faster, harder, each one forcing her to retreat.
[Mana Spell: Mana Clone]
A duplicate materialized beside him, rushing Scarlett from her blind side. She raised her spear to block, but the clone was not attacking. It was reaching.
[Mana Spell: Astral Chains]
Both Lucas and his clone cast the spell simultaneously. Chains erupted from the ground around Scarlett, wrapping around her limbs, her torso, her spear. She snarled, Void energy flaring to dissolve them, but for a moment—a single, vital moment—she was still.
Lucas's blade came down.
Veylan intercepted.
His wind blade met Lucas's katana, the impact sending both fighters skidding back. The blue-haired demon stood before Scarlett, his bow discarded, twin blades of compressed wind forming in his hands.
"You're outmatched," Veylan said. "Your spells are clever, but you cannot close the gap in speed or strength. And your mana—" He gestured at Lucas's heaving chest. "It's a lot."
He had used everything—every spell in his arsenal except the ones that would take too long or cost too much. And still, they stood before him, Scarlett already breaking free of the chains, her spear reforming in her grip.
But something had been pressing at the edge of his consciousness throughout the fight. A thought. An understanding waiting to form.
The only thing keeping Scarlett in this world is the soul contract.
Even if Ashely sealed the Demonic Mana Beast, Scarlett would not return to her prison dimension. She was bound here by something deeper. As long as that contract existed, she would remain. A threat that could return at any moment.
To remove her completely, the soul contract must be destroyed.
The thought crystallized. And with it, a decision.
Lucas closed his eyes.
The battle faded. The wind, the stone, the two enemies before him—all of it became distant, irrelevant. He reached inward, past his mana core, past his Origin, past everything he had ever known.
The Soul Dimension.
Time moved differently here. He had learned that before, in the quiet moments of meditation. One hundred times faster than the outside world. Hours could pass in the space between heartbeats. He had not understood it then. He did now.
He stood in the void of his own being, and before him floated the silver ball of light. His soul, Pulsing with a rhythm that was not quite a heartbeat. Waiting.
He reached for it.
And the soul spoke.
To use Soul Essence, you must kneel before its power.
Lucas had spent his entire existence trying to control. Mana bent to his will. Spells obeyed his command. His body, his mind, his very fate—he had fought to master them all. But the soul was not a tool. It was not a weapon to be wielded.
It was the value of existence itself.
Someone with a lower soul will only amount to lower existence. A higher soul will only amount to higher existence.
He had been approaching this backward. Trying to use his will to command something that could not be commanded. Trying to force understanding instead of accepting it.
Soul Essence cannot be used by the will of the user.
The knowledge settled into him like a stone dropping into still water. He could not force this. He could not control it. He could only—connect.
Only when he has fully connected to his soul can he gain the 1%.
The silver light pulsed. He felt it now, not as something separate from himself, but as something that had always been there. Waiting for him to stop trying to master it and simply... be.
His soul wanted higher existence. By truly knowing oneself, By evolving.
He opened his eyes in the Soul Dimension.
The silver ball of light had changed. It was larger now, brighter, pulsing with a rhythm that matched his own heartbeat. Threads of silver extended from it, reaching outward into the void. Connections to the world beyond. To Scarlett. To Veylan. To the contract that bound the demon princess to her masters.
He saw it clearly for the first time. A thread of black light, pulsing with demonic energy, connecting Scarlett's soul to something vast and hungry in the distance. The soul contract, the chains that kept her tethered to this world.
I kneel.
The thought was not submission. It was acceptance. He was not the master of his soul. He was its expression.
The silver light flared.
And Lucas understood.
He opened his eyes.
Scarlett's spear was descending toward his chest. Veylan's wind blades were closing from both sides. He had been still for less than a second in the physical world. It was enough.
[Soul Spell: Severance]
There was no chant, No hand signs. There was only understanding given shape. A thread of silver light extended from his palm, thin as a spider's silk, bright as a star.
It touched Scarlett's chest.
She froze. Her spear halted mid-strike. Her eyes widened. The thread was not aimed at her flesh, not aimed at her mana, not aimed at anything she had learned to defend against.
It was aimed at the contract.
The black thread connecting her soul to the generals. The agreement that bound her to this world.
He cut it.
The silver thread sliced through the black cord like light through shadow. There was no sound, no explosion, no visible sign of what had happened. But Scarlett screamed.
She dropped her spear, her hands flying to her chest, her body convulsing. The contract was broken, the connection severed, and the backlash was not hers alone. Far below, in the basin where Ashely walked toward her death, the Demonic Mana Beast roared.
The sound reached them even at this height—a howl of agony that shook the mountain, that sent cracks spidering across the stone shelf, that made Veylan stagger, his wind blades dissolving into nothing.
Scarlett fell to her knees. Her face was white, her breath coming in ragged gasps, but the pain that twisted her features was not entirely her own. Lucas saw it now—the threads that bound her to something else. The other demonic generals. The contract she had signed to escape her prison, to gain power, to find a way home. It bound her to them as surely as the beast had been bound to her. And when the silver thread had cut through her connection to the beast, it had sent ripples through everything she was connected to.
The generals felt it. They knew, and they were not pleased.
Scarlett's scream faded to a whimper. Blood dripped from her nose, her ears, the corners of her eyes. Veylan was at her side in an instant, his bow forgotten, his hands reaching for her.
"Scarlett—"
"Don't." Her voice was a rasp, but her eyes—her red, blood-swirled eyes—were fixed on Lucas. "He... cut it. He cut the contract."
Veylan's head snapped toward Lucas. His face, usually unreadable, was etched with something that might have been fear or fury or both. "How is that possible? Even in our world, destroying a soul contract can only be done by the people connected to it."
Lucas stood where he was, his hand still raised, the silver thread still glowing faintly at his fingertips. The understanding that had opened in his mind was still there, still burning, still showing him things he had never seen before.
The soul was not a tool. It was existence itself, And for the first time, he had touched it.
One percent.
Scarlett pushed herself up, her hand closing around her fallen spear. Her movements were unsteady, her face pale, but her eyes were clear. "You think this changes anything? The beast is still free. Your queen is still walking into its grasp. And you—" She laughed, a broken, bitter sound. "You can't even stand."